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Finding Balance In A 24/7 Workplace

With the rise of mobile technologies, there’s an increasing expectation for employees to be connected 24/7. How do you make time for yourself, your relationships and your family while keeping your career moving forward?

Following are five of many tips the audience picked up at an event held on March 26 – part of an ongoing series called The Next Step that offers advice on life and career for more recent grads.

Learn how to say, “No.” You can’t do everything, so figure out your priorities for this stage of your life and base your decisions on whether they make you happy. Re-evaluate these priorities often.

Set some boundaries, but stay flexible. Busy days are unavoidable, but step back and take a breath when things slow down. Learn to identify the warning signs that indicate your life is becoming unbalanced and make a change. If you have ideas about how to create a better balance in your career (for example, telecommuting or flex hours), it rarely hurts to ask.

Take some time for yourself. The fact that you don’t have a morning meeting or plans for a weekend doesn’t mean that you’re free to make other commitments. Communicate this to your friends and colleagues. They’ll probably understand.

A cluttered mind (or inbox) leads to stress, so write things down. Stay organized by making to-do lists, recording deadlines in a calendar with reminders, and dealing with emails right away, even if it simply means adding them your calendar for follow-up.

Make friends at work. You spend lots of time with them already, but if you actually want to see them when the workday is over, isn’t that saying something? But after work, find other things to talk about. Nobody likes “shop talk” on a Saturday night.